Ritalin Is For Lazy Parents

September 4, 2013

Pharmaceutical behavior modification is scary enough when it is confined to the realm of dystopian fantasy, a tool used by oppressive regimes to enforce docility and compliance. Like many such technological tools of oppression, though, the reality of its use is far more insidious: its use is not mandated but voluntary – at least on behalf of parents, who use it to mask the symptoms of cultural malaise exhibited by their kids.

If your kid reacts adversely to school, it’s because school is a dysfunctional social environment, not because your kid is suffering from a ritalin deficiency.

The causes of anxiety, depression, ADHD, and other psychological “disorders” are primarily environmental and social, not chemical and genetic. This means that it is your obligation as a parent to look long and hard at how your kid’s psychological needs for trust, validation, affection, stimulation, meaning, and purpose are being met, or not met, by their environments.

This will probably involve asking penetrating, difficult questions about your own life, which is hard. This is why so many parents opt for a pharmaceutical fix, because it seems easier than examining, let alone changing, your emotional responses, behavioral patterns, financial habits, career, and lifestyle.

But if you truly want what is best for your kids (which happens to coincide with what is best for you), this is what you signed up for.

Two experts on TED point out that the epidemic of pharmaceutical behavioral modification is killing creativity and entrepreneurship. You have to watch pretty much the whole videos to get to these points, but that’s fine because they are both worth watching if you haven’t already.

Incidentally, this is just as true for adults as it is for kids. You’re better off fixing your life than getting your fix.

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Wow, way to judge. I challenge you to walk even an inch in my husband’s chronically, severely depressed shoes and try to live any kind of life at all without antidepressants. Had he received treatment for his rampant and crippling ADHD as child there’s every possibility he wouldn’t be living a lifetime of serious depression. And our son was following in his footsteps – he chose to try ADHD meds, and he chose when to stop taking them. It was merely one way of approaching the problem, and we worked carefully with him to sort out the best course of action. Your words are undereducated, dangerous and damaging to those who truly need medication for illnesses that are, indeed, sometimes caused by chemical imbalance.